Green Options

Vice President Joe Biden just revealed a plan to make Berkeley First available nationwide. Yesterday at his Middle Class Task Force meeting Biden proposed the way to make solar roofs easy for everyone to afford with virtually free solar panels. If you now pay your current electricity bill and own a home, that’s literally all it takes to go solar under municipal tax assessment financing.

That’s because his plan; detailed in Recovery Through Retrofit simply makes the very successful Berkeley First municipal tax assessment financing a Federal program, called PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy), funded nationwide through the Recovery Act.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has announced that San Francisco will adopt municipal financing that helps building owners add renewable power without the risk or the hassle of loans.

The program is based on the Berkeley First program which allows homeowners to pay for solar installations through a 20-year assessment on their property taxes.

Newsom says “We’re going to adopt Berkeley’s program … but take it to a whole ’nother level.”

He’s not kidding: Berkeley’s was $1.5 Million (and sold out in the first nine minutes)

San Francisco’s program will be $30 million!